We interrupt this week to tell you that Government requirements are absurd

A Special, State-government, Tech-driven Midweek Issue of this usually-weekly blog

First some mood music. Please find the wildest carnival music you can think of, or if you are of a certain age, the Benny Hill theme song will suffice:

Here's one that plays for 13 minutes

Once you’ve adjusted your mood, please enjoy this real, authentic, and unedited (except to remove names and email addresses, long signature lines, large images, bars of text informing you the email is external, and dozens of lengthy paragraphs of “helpful” general information that is apparently included in every email from every state office) of my one-month effort to replace an uploaded document in order to to accept a truly needed and absolutely earned and hard-won (and special! And rare! And affirming!) grant from New York State’s Council on the Arts.

(and as an aside; thank you to NYSCA and Kathy Hochul and New York State for the grant. This post aside, it really is a blessing to be awarded.)

All you need as background is to know that the whole thing started when the brand-new system installed by the State of New York about a year ago to make grants applications easier automatically flagged our approved application for having an image without signatures.

Get ready, get set, PLAY THIS SOUNDTRACK, and GO!

We got an automated email (that announced it was automatic) letting us know that a required state charities tax document, the CHAR500, was unsigned and therefore the prequalification that had been previously approved (you can’t apply without it) was now rescinded pending the upload of the document - which we have.

Got that?

One part of the State Government didn’t have a piece of paper on file saying that another part of the same Government acknowledged us as real and they needed us to get that document to them even though the whole process is now electronic. Including the original document.

Everywhere else my personal cellphone number confirms the existence of the place I work…. Photo by stefan moertl on Unsplash

The reason our filed CHAR500 was unsigned was that when you file the CHAR500 on the brand-new CHAR500 site, it is all digital and gets sent back and forth for signature and filed and you no longer get a signed copy for your records. You just get an email saying you’re good.

SO knowing that, please enjoy this email thread. Is the music up loud enough?

Nov 13, 10:23am Me, to Charities Bureau (after confirming by phone to this Bureau, but looking for a written record - which the phone person told me I had to get by emailing):

Hello! Can you please confirm that Pen Parentis (EIN#46-2304312) is up to date on its CHAR500 filings? thank you!

Nov 13, 2:19pm Charities Bureau/CharBur (why??) to me:

The registration status of the organization is current. A current status means that the Charities Bureau has determined that the organization is not delinquent in its filings with the bureau as of the date the registration status is reviewed.

Nov. 14 11:29 I forwarded that email to the New York State department that administrates the prequalifications, the tech help desk of the website and the Council whose funding is being withheld pending prequalification, and added the note:

The Charities Bureau for NYState says that Pen Parentis is CURRENT in its filings of the CHAR500. Upon calling the Attorney General’s office for clarification, I was told all of our filings are current. Please advise.

Nov. 14 1:10pm the Prequalification Specialist Lead at the New York State Arts department sent a reply that simply asked me to direct further inquiries to the Deputy Director of Operations.

Nov 14 at 2:43pm I introduced myself in an email to the Deputy Director of Operations and repeated the situation.

Nov 21 at 10:30am The New York State Office of Information Technology Services replied and after apologizing for the delay, gave this request:

…the consensus is that if NYSCA is asking for that or requiring that signature, you will need to comply with that requirement. I would think it would be easy enough to just print it out, have it signed, scanned, and then re-uploaded.

Here insert some exquisite physical comedy on my part which will be detailed in the forthcoming email exchanges below. The Benny Hill music helps with this one. I spent an entire Thanksgiving weekend between cranberry sauce, old friends and visits with family rushing over to the computer to try again and again to upload this one single e-filed document. It isn’t possible. I have to call the Help Desk. They call back and tell me to change browsers. I do this. I do everything short of clearing my cache of every password — All this after PRINTING IT OUT and signing it and emailing it to my Board President who also printed it out and signed it and turned it back into a PDF and then emailed it back to me. (Remember: this is a State document that the State Attorney General’s Office says was filed just fine!)

This is a good place for a video break. Here’s a classic cartoon illustrating my email situation. Be careful. It’s likely to auto-play and drag you down a rabbit hole….

Don’t forget to restart the Benny Hill Music for part two!!

(here’s that great link again)

Dec 6 2024: The New York State Office of Information Technology Services followed up— without prompting!

I see that your prequalification application is still not resubmitted and approved. The issue is that your 2023 CHAR500 does not have any signatures on it.

You will need to resubmit it and show the appropriate signatures. If you do not have that document with both signatures, please follow the instructions below.

Many users are having difficulty obtaining a PDF of their 2023 CHAR500 from the Charities Bureau. In response to the delays that the Charities Bureau is encountering, we have temporarily changed our policy for organizations that are having a hard time getting their 2023 CHAR500 PDF.

If your organization is unable to obtain a full 2023 CHAR500 PDF, we are allowing nonprofits to upload the email confirmation they receive from the Charities Bureau for their current filing along with the previous year’s full report in one PDF.

You will need to combine both documents (the 2022 full CHAR500 and the 2023 email confirmation) into a single PDF and upload that.

Also note that you can often locate your CHAR500 by performing a search on the Charities Bureau website

The Charities Bureau Website is where I got the initial unsigned document that I uploaded in the first place….

But okay!! I got smart!!!

Dec 7 12:42am (yes this time is accurate - I have a day job that takes all my time already, I have no time for website nonsense) - I write a note back to the New York State Office of Information Technologies and attached the PDF of the signed CHAR500:

for your reference this is the CHAR500 with signatures that we are not able to upload.

Dec 9 8:52am I get this reply:

Please try to upload the attached version. What other questions do you have?

Dec 9 12:27pm I respond with a screenshot I’ve already discussed with the Help Desk on the phone:

The issue was that the button to upload the document was grayed out and I can’t upload. I tried both browsers and don’t really want to clear all my cache including passwords since there are so many passwords to reset once that is done. The “Add Documents” link brings up this popup which doesn’t allow me to upload anything—it is nonfunctional since “add attachment’ is greyed out. The OK button just brings me back home. Cancel is cancel.

Dec 9 1:34pm the reply is testy:

If someone is asking you to upload in the “Additional Documents” field, that is not correct. That is not where you need to do this. You need to get back into your prequalification application and upload the appropriate document in the Required Documents page.

Dec 9 1:56 I respond with four screenshots and this message:

I can not get to a place that has any attach or view/delete buttons. There are no choices that indicate where to go when you are trying to re-prequalify when you already have prequalified and THEN denied after the Attorney General’s office itself has said the Char500 is fine.

Here are screenshots. Please describe the icon I am supposed to press to get to the field where I will be allowed to upload the corrected image.

Dec 9th at 2:04pm We are getting somewhere!! This reply comes with a screenshot with circles and highlights— very helpful!

On this page you need to click the Collaborate button and then next. Then go to the Required Documents page and fix the documents that you are having problems with. Click the Attach button (not the View/Delete, that button doesn’t do anything).

Dec 9th at 3:07 however…..

I have finally gotten to that page but the attach button is gray (see screenshot below) and when I click the only live link “attach with additional date details” it won’t let the upload happen. the error message is that only one document may be uploaded at a time.

Dec 10th 3:21 we resume….Tech Desk writes back:

Yes, you have to click the minus button first. That will delete the original file and let you upload another file.

Dec 10th 1:48pm I send this screenshot:

please circle the minus button I am supposed to click. This is the entire screen that I see and there is no minus button on it that I can find.

AND AT 2:12PM I GET THE ANSWER:

For documents 1-7, click on Attach. If you need to delete a document, there would be the minus button on that page. For documents 8, 9, 10 click on Attach with Additional Date Details. There should also be a minus button on that page.

WELL - the CHAR500 is option 10 so I clicked the previously clicked additional date link…and found the minus button. There was no explanation anywhere in the instructions and no hover explanation. Just:

And the minus button worked. And now, as of 2:55pm December 10th -

There was a mini-cartoon moment where my Mac laptop decided to offer me ONLY the unsigned PDF version of the CHAR500 because once I had clicked it to see if it had signatures, the Mac made assumptions that this was the CHAR500 pdf that I wanted to upload (it wasn’t)….

But I defeated the AI this time around! Patience! Persistence! Human judgment!

And now…drumroll please…

I have managed to successfully initiate the upload (I didn’t write a note, for fear the language would be flagged as unseemly).

I successfully avoided the double pitfall of “secret ways to close the document and lose everything” offered here hidden in the lengthy instructions at the top of the webpage:

I have replaced the image of the unsigned State document with an image of a signed State document and it only took many weeks and many more work hours of both me and a nice state employee. And I have submitted said document and gotten the following automatic reply

Dec 10 - 2:54pm

A New York State Prequalification Application has been submitted by PEN PARENTIS LTD. Please review the Prequalification Application XXXXX in the Statewide Financial System (SFS) Agency Portal. This email was sent from an unmonitored email address used to distribute notifications only. Please do not reply to this message. Thank you.

Now, we can go back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Whew!

BACK TO WORK!! (Photo by Sinitta Leunen on Unsplash)

Have a great day everyone!!!

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